In electro-surgery, a high-frequency (HF), alternative called radio frequency (RF), electric current is applied to tissue in order to cut, coagulate, desiccate, and/or fulgurate tissue depending on the mode of delivering electric energy to the tissue. The fact that such a device is used in a large amount of surgical procedures already indicates the usefulness of the electro-surgical device or the electro-surgical unit (ESU), in clinical practice also known as a ‘Bovie’ device named after the Dr. William T. Bovie, one of the original inventors of the device.
Depending on the tissue in front of the electro-surgical device, the surgeon can decide on which operating mode of the device is used, e.g. cutting and/or coagulating. A problem is however that the surgeon cannot know beforehand what kind of tissue is just below the device since it is typically not visible to the eye. As a result, either the surgeon must decide upfront the mode to be used, or have to react afterwards to what happens with the tissue. For instance, he/she may cause a bleeding and then has to take actions afterwards to stop the bleeding. Another problem is related to complications, thus, when the surgeon is operating, he/she would like to prevent negative influence on critical tissue structures of the patient. Again, the surgeon cannot know beforehand because he/she cannot always predict or determine the tissue structure that lay ahead.
In U.S. Pat. No. 7,749,217, an electro-surgery device is described in which a light delivery system is positioned in the hand piece of the device (see FIG. 1, PRIOR ART). The light delivery system is capable of focusing a beam of light near, or on, the active electro-surgical electrode to detect the amount of blood, and a corresponding control of the electro-surgical energy generator is capable of e.g. automatically changing from a cutting mode to a mixed, or blended, cutting and coagulation mode when detecting a significant amount of blood i.e. a reactive control. Further, the electro-surgical device disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,749,217 has the inherent disadvantage that the light delivery system will typically be rather imprecise due to the remote position on the handle portion. Since most of the detected light is reflected from the surface almost no information of what is tissue is present below the surface can be detected. Also, the light system is only capable of detecting blood.
The inventors of the present invention have appreciated that an improved electro-surgical system is of benefit, and has in consequence devised the present invention.